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Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#841

Post by saddestcatever »

andrepd wrote: post #550
whitepoplar wrote: post #457

Physical space for lounging, socializing, and working. I live in NYC and there's still a striking lack of space that facilitates people getting out of their apartments and doing "whatever." Starbucks popularized the concept of the "third space" (the first two being housing + workplace) and I think there's so much room to improve upon this.

Isn't this just a café?

That's the idea - but most cafes (at least in Boston) can't handle that sort of volume - you're going to get stink eyes if you settle in for more than an hour or two. Wish it was more welcomed (as I've seen more common in Europe / small towns) to be welcome as long as they have seats.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#842

Post by RUG3Y »

mattmanser wrote: post #733
ungzd wrote: post #715

Creative tools. Everyone is so obsessed with content consumption tools and making TV out of internet, with deprecating desktop in favor of handhelds where you tap ads and take selfies with dog faces. For graphics, everyone still use Adobe products which are not that bad but still few had changed in Photoshop and Illustrator from 1991. For music, DAWs are not that bad and there's no single monopolist like Adobe, but V…

My illustrator friend uses manga studios, he loves it: http://my.smithmicro.com/manga-studio-comic-illustration-sof...

Manga Studio is quite awesome, one of my favorite pieces of creative software ever. I wish it could be used to make vector art too - then I'd never need anything else.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#843

Post by vcanales »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #819
edraferi wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so say you do that. What advantages do you think you could realize through this ground up rewrite?

Look at the millions of complaints filed about HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc. There is huge room for improvement in the way we write native and web applications - the fact that we still make a distinction signals its own problem. We can do better, and there will always be room for more innovation and improvement.

'From the ground up' doesn't always equate better. In this case, why not just innovate and improve on the tools that are already in use?

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#844

Post by kmicklas »

maxsilver wrote: post #558
whitepoplar wrote: post #482

"Kickstarter" for cities. Housing is unaffordable in desirable cities, but nobody wants to move to less desirable cities, where housing is affordable. Take a city that is desperate for development, like Detroit, and figure out a way for a couple thousand people to "pledge" moving to a dense-ish urban area at a preferential rate.

I think you have cause/effect mixed up a bit. Those cities are only "affordable" because people aren't there. If a couple thousand people all simultaneously buy into an "affordable dense-ish urban area", that action would make that area un-affordable, and subsequently create all the same displacement/gentrification/nimby problems that follow. Your Detroit example is a good one, the dense-ish urban area now costs arou…

This would be the modern version of the suburban development fallacy - building neighborhoods to a finished state with no method for organic expansion.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#845

Post by shagmin »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #194
DiabloD3 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calories in, calories out is not the golden rule, and this has been scientifically proven false. Also, hilarious adventure I went on once: I ate 4000 calories of bacon a day and nothing else for a month... ended up cutting it off a little early because I was losing weight too quickly. Your second and third points however are scientifically supported, but do not confuse this with "obesity is complicated." It is not ho…

That sounds more like a malnutrition issue no? If all you were eating is bacon and nothing else.

Makes me wonder how much of the weight loss was more due to water loss rather than body fat. I remember reading something about people who are on the verge of starvation lose weight after getting access to food again due to water loss from the water required to digest food.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#847

Post by philippnagel »

sidcool wrote: post #119
ernestipark wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See https://www.rainforestqa.com/ , a YC company. They do some of this.

What is the tech stack they use?

From their jobs page[0]:

* Ruby

* Rails

* Grape

* Go

* Redis

* Postgres

* QueueClassic

* GraphQL

* React with redux

* KVM

* Puppet

* Heroku

* AWS

0: https://www.rainforestqa.com/jobs/

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#848

Post by TuringNYC »

scottmf wrote: post #385
TuringNYC wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize this is a US-centric view, but since so many startups are US based, i'll present it anyway... Health and medicine startups are really difficult. Not impossible, but the forces are all stacked against you. I hope and pray some startups can succeed, but the system in the US is set up to perpetuate the broken healthcare system. Sometimes, I feel efficiency and health are almost not a goal. I realize this is va…

What country did you move to?

We moved [temporarily] to Qatar. We tried to sell our solutions in the US for a year w/o any success. We have spent the past two years in Qatar and have achieved far more traction and government-level engagement. The market here is small, but large enough to prove out concepts.

The obvious angle would be to prove efficacy and then try again to sell in the US (both my co-founder and I were both and raised in the US so we'd love to move back.) Another angle might be to try and sell in the UK or other single payer systems that are closer to home.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#849

Post by icefox »

sytelus wrote: post #207

Hackers rarely think of politics as playing field for startups, so in my mind this one of the biggest untapped opportunity right now. People from both sides are going nuts over Trump politics. That means tons of eyeballs and attention that would be available for the right startups for next 4 years. Things like BuzzFeed and DailyXYZ are going to make a massive killing in terms of ad revenue. At this stage still the re…

Who would pay directly or indirectly for any of these?

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#850

Post by danielvinson »

danieka wrote: post #838
danielvinson wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's something that has been discussed in depth in the pro community for a long time... the conclusion that most team owners have made is that you generally need a coach who can play at a top pro level or has previously played at a top pro level. Obviously the target market here isn't pro teams, but even so, the people who have large amounts of money on the line choose not to hire coaches who have never been very g…

We'd love to have you on our platform. Have you considered signing up? I'm available on danielk at fliffr.com if you have any questions.

I haven't played in a long time (I'm only involved tangentially these days), so I wouldn't be interested, but thanks :)
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